Toward a democratised and integrated form of evaluation

But then again – are we overly paternalistic? Can people not make their own decisions about participation and representation? Why is this potential for harm tolerated in socially engaged practice? Are the stakes so low these ethical concerns can be overlooked with no professional regulation? Can we develop evaluation methods of participatory monitoring in which artists and participants are in control of the conversation and can use the knowledge to feed back into practice? Can these methods be sensitive to the needs for indeterminacy and capture unexpected outcomes – both positive and negative? Can a new approach be iterative and integrated into practice to focus on valuing currently unregistered forms of knowledge – artistic value, dialogic value, and negative value? And finally, can evaluation balance the need for both processes (to better understand how art works) and also its outcomes external reporting and public accountability?

As an artist-researcher with expertise in socially engaged art and cultural measurement, I am often invited into communities not my own as an external evaluator. Projects increasingly require an ‘independent and external review’ of creative processes and outcomes as a funding requirement for public accountability and liability by neoliberal governments. While this may be a useful method to measure the effectiveness of policies, there may be little consideration and documentation of the ‘value’ and ‘values’ achieved in the project. Informed by the politics of cultural measurement, I will often decline the invitation due to my commitment to practice that is embedded and relational and because I have limited knowledge regarding the local cultural context. However, I will typically offer a new proposal in the form of a research partnership to develop a participatory approach for evaluation. In this revised scenario, we can enter into a co-creative relationship that values reciprocal knowledge in effort to critically reflect on the project. Drawing on the research findings of the 2014 research project, I will describe my experience and methodology developed for two further evaluation projects in which this relationship productively ensued.